6 Things You Need Before You Design Your Sales Page

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Whether you’re hiring a pro or DIYing — this post is going to give you an overview of everything you’ll need before you start designing your sales page.

Getting everything prepped and in order before you start designing your sales page (or hiring someone to design it for you) is crucial for a smooth process.

There are six things I recommend to all of my clients and customers to have ready to go before they touch a pixel.

1. A CLEAR OFFER

Most people tend to forget about this crucial step.

Before you can design an effective sales page, you first need a super clear offer. Without it, you won’t be able to write your sales page copy, choose the perfect colors and fonts, or worse — SELL TO ANYONE.

If you don’t have a clear offer yet, and want to steal the exact templates I use to map out the details of my ideas, download the Irresistible Offer Planning Kit. It’s 100% free and will save you a ton of time trying to figure it out on your own.

2. YOUR BRAND SUITE

Your brand suite includes the colors, fonts and logo for your new offer.

Putting together a clear and cohesive brand style board for your offer before you start designing your sales page is the best way to make sure your sales page is communicating the right message to your audience, and doesn’t look like a two year old threw it together.

In Irresistible Sales Pages, we have an entire module dedicated to creating the brand style for your offer, but you can grab the free cheat sheet for using Pinterest to create the Perfect Sales Page Inspiration Board by clicking the image below.

3. SALES PAGE COPY

Next to the design of your sales page, the copy is the equally important second half of the Irresistible Sales Page equation.

I always recommend writing your sales page copy before you start designing, so that your copy has a nice flow to it and doesn’t sound like a jumbled mess.

In fact, this is one of the first steps I take when creating a new online course.

4. TESTIMONIALS + CASE STUDIES

Now is a great time to start collecting testimonials and case studies from past and current clients so that when you start designing your sales page, you have everything ready to go.

Here are the steps I take when reaching out for testimonials for a new sales page:

Create a list of past customers/clients, mentors and other top influencers you want to reach out to for a testimonial or case study.

Create a simple form for each person to fill out that prompts them with questions that you want specific feedback on.

Individually reach out to each person with your testimonial request. Make sure to also ask them for a headshot you can use on the sales page.

Piece together their answers into a testimonial.

Send the final testimonial to each person for their approval before you start using.

Save each testimonial and image into a special folder so everything is ready to go when you start creating your sales page.

Once you have your sales page launched, I highly recommend putting a testimonial request into your email follow ups so it’s more on autopilot.

Don’t have testimonials for your new course yet?

I suggest reaching out to mentors and colleagues for their testimonials. Give them early access to the program so they can give their honest opinions of your content.

In Irresistible Sales Pages, there’s a bonus by Maggie Patterson that walks you through how to get killer testimonials for your sales page, including the exact questions to ask on your form and email swipe copy you can use when asking for the testimonial.

5. VISUALS

Oh, visuals. The thing that can take your sales page from blah to irresistible. And we like irresistible. And so do your customers.

I think I’ve repeated this statistic like a million times, but here it is again:

“40% of people will respond better to visual information than plain text.”(Source:Zabisco)

In other words, visuals are essential if you want to keep people on your sales page for longer amounts of time, which just increases your chances that they’ll purchase from you.

The visuals I recommend gathering before you start designing could include:

Photos of you (consider getting new headshots taken if you haven’t had new ones in a while, to freshen things up)

Stock photos that align with your offer and message that you can use as background images and other areas of your sales pages (check out my fave free stock photos sites here)

Icon styles you might want to use on your sales page (Creative Market is a great resource for icons)

Product mockups that show what’s included in your offer (you can use mockup templates from Creative Market if you’re comfortable using Photoshop, or use a site like placeit.net to create free mockup images)

6. SHOPPING CART

You’ll need to connect your Buy Now button to an order form or payment link so people can purchase your course, so having a shopping cart set up before you start designing (or at least knowing who you’re going to use) will speed up the process of launching.

Not using software, like Infusionsoft, that has a built in shopping cart?